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It felt as if cold talons suddenly pinched the skin on the back of Dean's
neck, pulling it way too tight. Forcing himself up; the boy drew the Browning,
barely breathing as he watched the door.
"Dean," someone said, and he couldn't believe how much it sounded like Krysty.
Something shimmered into being on his right. It was impossibly close, near
enough to reach out and touch him. He'd have seen anyone or anything that had
come that close to him.
Then he saw the face, made out the features. She was indistinct, as if he were
seeing her through a heavy fog.
"Krysty?" he said, not believing it.
"Your father is coming for you. Look for him."
Her words sounded as though they were coming from a long distance, then she
was gone, just like some kind of ghost. Before he could puzzle over her
appearance and what it meant, the door burst open.
Framed in it was a nightmare figure that Dean remembered well: a giant mutie
pig, its beady, merciless eyes nearly buried in wrinkles of scarred gristle.
The wicked tusks curled up on either side of its mouth.
Before he could get the Browning, the beast started for him, squealing shrilly
in anticipation of an easy kill.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
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The corridor Ryan turned onto was filled with fire. A roiling ball of it
wavered back and forth in front of him, seeking oxygen, threatening to
collapse in on itself from the lack of fuel.
He had eluded his pursuers for the moment and was aware that the Mirage was
showing potential for burning down around his ears. The sec men with the
flamethrowers had been generous with their attentions, leaving burning areas
and dead monkeys in their wake.
The group at the bottom of the inferno hadn't been so lucky.
Eyes stinging from the heat and the smoke, Ryan couldn't tell how many of them
there were, or what exactly had killed them. With the way at least temporarily
impassable, he turned back and took one of the other hallways that he'd passed
up.
He sucked at the knuckles of his left hand, which he'd skinned badly when he'd
thrown himself away from the flamethrower at the window. He spit out a
mouthful of blood, hitting a small fire that clung tenaciously to fragments of
the worn carpet in the hallway.
When he was halfway down the new corridor, glancing to the sides to check the
doors of what turned out to be more hotel rooms, he felt a chill gust through
him, and even thought he'd smelled Krysty's scent next to him. He didn't look;
if Krysty was still alive, she was outside with the others.
Servos whined through the hall, but he didn't know what they came from. There
were other men searching through the ruins of the Mirage, as well. He'd seen
them. And he'd seen one more dead boy in green. At the most, only five of them
remained.
Farther down the hallway, he found a door that had a short flight of stairs
behind it. The brass plate on the door announced Hotel Staff Only. The lock
had been shot through.
With the Steyr in his hands, his back and side pressing against the side of
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the stairwells for cover, he went up. His ears monitored all sounds. A slight
whisper of movement came from the top of the stairs.
At the landing, he paused, looking back the way he'd come and wanting to make
sure
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closing the gap behind him, he put his hand on the doorknob and turned. It
wasn't locked, and the door opened easily.
Inside the room, slashes of neon lights danced around carelessly. The wall to
his left held only glass from top to bottom. A bed occupied a space to his
right, tucked in beside a desk that held a comp. The broken mirror covering a
big section of the wall on the other side reflected the furniture, making it
look as if another room were just next door.
He looked for the source of the noise, his senses at full peak. He stepped
into the room, then ducked under the attack of the winged monkey that had been
clinging to the space between the door and the ceiling. Unable to get off a
shot, he swung the Steyr and felt the meaty impact as he struck the monkey
with the rifle's butt.
Shrilling in pain, the monkey scuttled under the bed.
Drawing the SIG-Sauer, Ryan touched off three rounds across the bed, trying to
find the mutie creature.
With a scream of pain and rage, the monkey came out from under the bed in a
rush. Its mouth was open, showing its deadly fangs, the black talons reaching
for Ryan's throat.
"Fireblast!" Ryan shoved the blaster into the monkey's face and pulled the
trigger. The 9
mm round punched a hole through the beast's mouth and exited through the back
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